Julian Beever's Pavement Drawings

With the explosion of socially charged street art like the excellent work of Banksy and Shepard Fairey in recent years, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there are still artists creating art in public spaces for the sole purpose of looking interesting, what some would call “art for art’s sake” that exists primarily to introduce something aesthetically intriguing into people’s daily lives.

Julian Beever is an English chalk artist, and he’s been creating his mind-bending images on streets around the world since the mid-‘90s. Formally, his pavement images are part of a long tradition of Trompe-l’œil artwork, in which clever uses of perspective and false frames or borders give a two dimensional work the illusion of being a real-life three dimensional object or space. The use of the technique dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times, where a typical trompe-l’œil mural might consist of a false door, window or hallway intended to make a room seem larger than it was.

Check out some examples of his work below, taken from the Pavement Drawings section of his website. You can also check out a video of him making his piece White Water Rafting here.